Study the past. Understand the present. Make your future at Stony Brook.Welcome to History—an engaged community of scholars dedicated to the public good.Paul Gootenberg, Chair

History Department Statement on the Protests Against Anti-Black Violence

As scholars, educators, and public servants, Stony Brook’s history faculty stand with
those who have turned to protest as a democratic expression of outrage over police
brutality and the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Tony McDade, Ahmaud
Arbery, and so many others.

Even though the semester is behind us, we feel connected to our larger community
of learners, and are thinking of our students and colleagues in these dark days.
We want to acknowledge the frustration, pain, and confusion many in our community
are feeling, and that we share. We are united in grief and outrage over police brutality,
the long history of racial injustice, and the daily indignities, abuses, and injury
such injustice and violence precipitate. The novelist and essayist James Baldwin
observed that history “does not refer merely, or principally, to the past. … history
is literally present in all that we do.” History reminds us that Black Lives Matter,
that what we do and say matters, and that there is still much work to be done.

As historians, we are committed to trying to understand and address the root causes
of systemic racism and to make our society more inclusive and equitable. While we
cannot tell the future, we do believe that this will not be over when the protests
end. We shall all be processing this for many weeks and months to come and, with
our department community, will devise concrete actions, immediate and longer term,
we can take as teachers and citizens to contribute to the fight against injustice
and systemic racism.

In The Spotlight

Matías Hermosilla (PhD Candidate)

Has published a peer reviewed article entitled "La Palmada en la Frente (1970): Political
Cartoons, the Global Sixties, and Popular Culture in Chile" in
Studies of Latin American Popular Culture (May 2020). Link found
here.

Cody Rossler (PhD Candidate)

Just won the prestigious Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship (examining ethics
and religion) for his thesis "Race Science on Tour: Instructing Publics in Provincial
Britain, 1830–1870."

History Department Graduate Ceremony

The History Department Graduate Ceremony from 2020 can be found
here.
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